On a Honda and Miata they can but I haven't found a way on a Toyota. You can have them removed and they make OEM plastic covers that go in place of the switches in the steering wheel.

 

There's a connector under the steering column. You can give it a shot and ask you local car mechanic. These paddle shifters are optional and as long as he has access to the Toyota manuals any reasonable mechanic should be able to figure how to unplug them.

 

Good answers... there have been threads where folks have added them... In theory you should be able to do the opposite, unplug and remove them

 

Seems a bit drastic to remove the paddle shifters. You can just hit the plus paddle shifter a few times to get back to the drive position. And also when the car comes to a stop the transmission shifts back to the D position automatically with the V6.

 

Unless maybe if it was a TRD, I'd prefer to remove paddle shifters that I would never use. I'd remove the driving modes too but that is me.

 

*EDIT I Gooled this and discovered I was incorrect

Doesn't the shifter have to be in a sport or manual mode for the paddles shifters to even work?

 

Doesn't the shifter have to be in a sport or manual mode for the paddles shifters to even work?

Nope

Even in "D" the paddle-shifters are active. The electronics may limit how low or high of a gear is engaged based upon current speed but they are active regardless of whether you're in "D" or "S" shift modes. The "Driving mode select" switches (Eco, Norm, Sport) have no bearing on whether or not the paddle switches are active.

 

If they are plastic, I think a pair of wire cutters could cut them off at the base.

 

The thing with the paddle shifters is most never ever use them. And when you hit them by mistake it causes some sort of reaction needed right away by the driver. Now I'm not saying you should use it that much. But, You should get used to how it works and how to handle it so it's no big deal to plus it back up to the D (drive position. And you will find you won't press the paddle shifters by mistake anymore. It could be useful when pulling a hill , a panic stop , or a long downgrade. Or even Smoke than Civic off the line.

 

This may or may not help, but if you could find out if this can be turned on and off at the ECU, you might try Carista. The dongle is $29.95, I believe, and their app is free. It is fee based, but you can get the first month free to try it, $49.95 a year. You can do monthly as well. There are a number of Youtube videos, and these folks really like it. If it an available option, you can toggle it on and off. It would cost you $29.95, but you could see what is available to turn on and off. There is one guy who is a certified Toyota technician, and he is really impressed with it...Very Good budget Scan Tool for Toyota owners and Lexus owners - YouTube. You might even ask this tech if the option to turn it off is available.

 

if you could find out if this can be turned on and off at the ECU, you might try Carista

I don't recall ever seeing an option that would disable the paddles in Techstream. Carista offers a subset of the Techstream options, so I don't think it would do it.